Barack Obama: "I want us to have a country where my daughters have the exact same life chances as somebody else's sons do."

GLAMOUR: We had an interview with your wife, Michelle, last fall. She got some press because she described you the way that I think most wives would describe their husbands in the morning, which was "snore-y and stinky." [Laughs.]

Barack Obama: Snore-y and stinky! I remember it!

GLAMOUR: When I read it, I didn't even blink an eye at that. I just thought, My husband too....

BO: That's how women talk about their husbands! [Laughs.]

GLAMOUR: In January, in a post on our political blog, Glamocracy, you said you would not be running for president without the women in your life, particularly your mother and grandmother. I'm curious about what lessons they taught you that would actually make you a better president.

BO: Well, different lessons from the two of them. From my grandmother I learned grit. I mean, she's just a tough lady. Here's somebody who grew up in the Great Depression, who had a baby, and then my grandfather went to fight in World War II. She was working on a bomber assembly line. She was like Rosie the Riveter while my grandfather was gone. He came back, he went to college on the GI bill, but she never got a college education. She started as a secretary at a bank and ended up becoming a vice president at the bank, and you know, was just determined always to figure out how she could make her life and the lives of her family a little bit better. [She was a] very unsentimental, very practical, Midwestern, common sense type of person.

My mother was more of the dreamer, and the kindest soul I ever knew. What I got from her was empathy really, a sense of being able to stand in other people's shoes, see through their eyes, which I think is so important in our politics today. We've got a politics that is constantly dividing us. And I think when you have that sense of what other people's lives are like...then you start seeing our common humanity. And I think that's what's needed right now.

My mother was also somebody who, very early on, taught me about the issues of gender equality. She ended up becoming a specialist in international development, focused on microlending to women all around the world. She would say to me, "If you teach women how to read, if they're productive in the economy, that's going to be how that economy develops." The best indicator of whether a country does well is how it treats its girls and its women. And that's a lesson I carried with me for a long time.

GLAMOUR: Is it true that she used to read the Declaration of Independence to you?

BO: Yes.

GLAMOUR: So if I read that to my kids, will they run for president?

BO: You know, I don't know. [Laughs.] But you might try it. It's a good read anyway.

GLAMOUR: Speaking of those issues of gender equality, you gave an important speech on race back in March. If you were going to give a speech laying out some of the challenges facing women and what your presidency would do to address them, what would you focus on?

BO: Well, I think I would actually start, when it comes to women, with economics. The fact that women are still making less than 80 cents to a man's dollar in the work place. The fact that we just recently had a Supreme Court ruling that made it more difficult to sue in cases of blatant...discrimination ...

BO: The Ledbetter case. The fact that we couldn't get a number of senators and members of Congress to vote to overturn that ruling, indicates how far we have to go. So equal pay for equal work, making sure that women with similar qualifications are getting treated similarly in the workplace. Making sure that...when it comes to child-rearing or caring for an aging parent, there are supports in place so that that does not become a crushing burden and a huge disadvantage on women who end up having to carry that load. I think those are issues that are absolutely critical. But there's also a cultural shift that still has to take place, that's not yet complete. We've made a lot of progress, but in terms of attitudes, I want us to have a country where my daughters have the exact same life chances as somebody else's sons do. And I don't think we're there yet. I mean, we still have to fight for things like Title IX. We still have to struggle to make sure that girls are encouraged in areas like math and science that maybe haven't been traditionally emphasized. We still have to make certain that responsibilities for child care are equally divided. That requires government action to make it easier for families, but it also requires, I think, attitudinal changes, and hopefully that's something that I can project as president.

GLAMOUR: I know you've stood behind the issues of child care and maternity leave. Why is maternity leave, which would seem to be the most wholesome issue you could imagine, such a heavy lift politically?

BO: Look, I think it comes down to cost. And we've got a tradition in this country of a thinner safety net compared to other advanced industrial countries. Small businesses and large businesses alike sometimes resist any government mandate that would give them less flexibility in terms of dealing with their employees. The thing that we haven't done, we haven't had enough leadership from the White House to do, is to educate those businesses...[that providing] this kind of support ultimately means you're retaining talent, you're retaining people with skills that are needed in the workforce.

GLAMOUR: One of the things that we're always doing at Glamour is trying to encourage our readers to consider public service as a career. And a lot of them tell us, "I don't want to do it because I think there's going to be an incredibly high cost to my family." You're very open about how difficult it is to try to do both things at once. Is there anything that can be done to the political system that would remedy that?

BO: Probably not. I mean, it's very tough...I think you can do it at the local level, which can be extraordinarily rewarding. When you start getting to the Congress or the U.S. Senate, then the travel demands, the fund-raising demands just make it tough.... And I've said this before, probably the most valuable player in our campaign is my mother-in-law.

GLAMOUR: Because she is doing the child care.

BO: Because she's doing child care for us, and she only lives 15 minutes away from our house, and she is a spry and lovely 70-year-old....

GLAMOUR: And is it true you don't have a nanny?

BO: Right. [My mother-in-law] gives Michelle the support she needs and the comfort she needs to juggle everything that she's doing, in addition to helping me with the campaign. But it's hard. And for me, at least once a day, you ask yourself, Is this worth it? Is it worth me missing the soccer game? Is it worth me missing the walk with the girls?... The girls are doing fine; I'm probably the one who suffers most from my absence.

GLAMOUR: You mentioned Michelle. While the positive ratings on Michelle are higher than those of Cindy McCain, her negative ratings are higher as well. I'm curious about how as a husband that makes you feel.

BO: Well, it's infuriating, but it's not surprising. Because let's face it...you know, what happened was that the conservative press--Fox News and the National Review and columnists of every ilk--went fairly deliberately at her in a pretty systematic way, and treated her as the candidate in a way that you just rarely see the Democrats try to do against Republicans. And I've said this before: I would never have my campaign engage in a concerted effort to make Cindy McCain an issue. And I would not expect the Democratic National Committee or people who were aligned with me to do it, because essentially spouses are civilians. They didn't sign up for this; they're supporting their spouse. And so it took a toll. If you start being subjected to rants by Sean Hannity and the like, day in and day out, that'll drive up your negatives.

Everybody who knows Michelle knows how extraordinary she is. She's ironically the most quintessentially American woman that I know. I mean, she grew up in a Leave It to Beaver family. She is the best mother I know. And our kids are a testament to that because she's really had to raise them oftentimes without me being there. She's the most honest person I know. She's smart. She's funny. And so yeah, it infuriates me. And I think that it's an example of the erosion of civility in our political culture that she's been subjected to these attacks. And my attitude is that the people who have attacked her in the ways that they have, if they've got a difference with me on policy, they should debate me, not her. [See Glamour readers' reactions here.]

GLAMOUR: You said that your campaign would never take aim at Cindy McCain. Do you believe that the McCain campaign has had a hand in these attacks on Michelle?

BO: I wouldn't say the McCain campaign itself, but I would say that the apparatus of conservative columnists, blogs and the like, talk shows, talk radio, absolutely have a hand. I don't think there's a secret there. You see in the span of three or four weeks essentially the same talking points being used on a whole variety of shows, or in a whole variety of columns over and over again. It's something that they've done well in the past, and you know, Hillary Clinton was subject to this, others have been subject to this. It is part of our political environment that I'd like to change.

GLAMOUR: On Larry King Live you shrugged off how it feels to see depictions of yourself in the press and said that you have a thick skin. Is it harder to have that thick skin when it's about your spouse and not you?

BO: I don't have a thick skin when it comes to criticism of my wife. And you know, the problem is that rarely do these folks have the guts to say it to your face. [Laughs.] The Internet is just a wonderful political tool, and we've been able to organize our campaign really in part because of the Internet. But the flip side of it is that the Internet allows rumors, myths and attacks to get out there very quickly to a lot of people, and it's very hard to catch up.

BO: Well, the health care mandate that was being discussed wasn't a mandate that government provide health care. It was rather a mandate that you have to buy health care whether you can afford it or not.... That led me to say, let's first focus on making sure that it's affordable. So my plan does say if you already have health care, we're going to work to lower your premiums. If you don't have health care, you can buy a health care plan similar to the one that I have as a member of Congress, and we'll subsidize you on a sliding scale. So there won't be anybody who can't afford it.

Now it is possible that there are still going to be some young people out there who think they're indestructible and don't use the system that we put in place. I think that's actually increasingly rare, though. I was in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in a women's town hall meeting...and a young woman raised her hand. She was working two jobs. Neither of them provided health care. And she was getting close to 30. She said she hadn't gone to a doctor in 10 years! Hadn't gone to a doctor in 10 years! And I said, "Well, what about just basic gynecological exams? A Pap smear?"

And she explained to me, "Well, even Planned Parenthood in Albuquerque is costing me maybe a hundred something, and I just can't afford it. I just don't have that spare income." Now that tells me the issue is not that she's not interested in having health care, she desperately wants it. She just has to make sure she can manage it in some fashion. And so we're going to make those subsidies high enough so that she can get health care, especially that kind of preventive care. Having basic screenings, basic checkups, over the long term will save our health care system money.

GLAMOUR: Senator McCain was asked at a press event about the policy of some insurance companies not to cover birth control even when they cover Viagra. Where do you stand?

BO: I think that's a no-brainer. Birth control has to be covered, period.

GLAMOUR: Are there any things that you're uncomfortable about being asked as you make your way through this campaign?

GLAMOUR: But I'm noticing that here we are chatting and you're perfectly comfortable bringing up Pap smears, and that's not something that every politician does.

BO: When you've got a wife and two daughters and a sister, and a mother who died of ovarian cancer, then I think you're really mindful of some very specific women's health issues that have to be covered.

GLAMOUR: Is support for Roe v. Wade a litmus test for you in appointing a Supreme Court justice?

BO: You know, I taught constitutional law for 10 years at the University of Chicago. I feel very strongly that a right to privacy is part of the overarching structure of the Constitution. I think a Supreme Court justice who did not believe in that right, as well as the implications for gender equality, would not have the kind of judicial philosophy that I generally believe in.

GLAMOUR: There's a lot of talk about pro-choice and pro-life groups trying to work together. How do we actually bring those groups together? Because usually it falls apart once they start discussing issues like contraception and sex education in schools, and so forth.

BO: I think there are some very specific areas where we can find agreement. We know that if you have fewer unwanted pregnancies, we're going to have fewer abortions.... Yes, there are some groups that may get queasy about sex education or contraception, but I think there are an awful lot of people that may not believe in abortion but do believe in birth control and contraception.... And I think there are a lot of pro-choice women who would agree that there's nothing wrong with making adoption a greater option for women who choose not to want to be mothers at this stage of their lives. We're not going to get 100 percent agreement on issues that are so controversial. But we can certainly make a lot more progress than we've made so far.

GLAMOUR: I have a question from a reader, 26-year-old Jennifer Peeler in Symsonia, Kentucky: "I'm in law school and will graduate with over $100,000 in loans. What will you do to help the rising number of students with such high student loan payments?"

BO: It starts with what I'm calling for, a $4,000 tuition credit [for] every student, every year, in exchange for [100 hours of] community service, or national service of some sort: working in an underserved hospital or underserved school, or joining the Peace Corps, joining the foreign service. That would make community colleges practically free for undergraduates! If they went to a four-year public college or university, it would cover about two thirds of the tuition.

Now I'll admit to your reader, I am sympathetic to somebody who went to law school and came [out] with a ton of debt. The truth, though, is we probably don't need more lawyers. [Laughs.] So we'll help you get your undergraduate degree. If you want to go to law school, though, you're probably going to be able to earn enough to pay off your loans. It just won't be any fun.

GLAMOUR: Let's talk about women and the role they might play in an Obama cabinet.

BO: There are some extraordinary women public servants out there who I've gotten to know, and Hillary Clinton is obviously one of them, who's just brilliant and tenacious and has an incredible track record of service. Kathleen Sebelius, governor of Kansas. Janet Napolitano, governor of Arizona. Christine Gregoire, in Washington state. Senators, colleagues of mine, like Claire McCaskill, and Amy Klobuchar. There are just some terrific public servants, all of whom could serve in a cabinet-level position.... Whether they'd want to or not, all that stuff is a little premature.

GLAMOUR: What about Maria Shriver? Or even her husband [California's Republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger]?

BO: Maria's a dear friend and a great supporter. I'm not sure that she's interested in a cabinet post at this point.